Films & Schedules
- AUSTRIA

LA PIVELLINA

DIRECTOR: Tizza Covi, Rainer Frimmel - AUSTRIA

In a muddy trailer park on the outskirts of Rome, Patty and husband Walter, performers in a poor traveling circus, wait out the dreary winter. One day at a nearby park, Patty finds a two-year-old girl standing alone in the rain. She brings little Asia home to dry her off and discovers a note in her pocket saying the girl will be picked up in due course by her troubled mother. As the days turn into weeks with no sign of the mother, a new family is formed that offers unexpected joy to everyone in the itinerant community. Bringing a...

In a muddy trailer park on the outskirts of Rome, Patty and husband Walter, performers in a poor traveling circus, wait out the dreary winter. One day at a nearby park, Patty finds a two-year-old girl standing alone in the rain. She brings little Asia home to dry her off and discovers a note in her pocket saying the girl will be picked up in due course by her troubled mother. As the days turn into weeks with no sign of the mother, a new family is formed that offers unexpected joy to everyone in the itinerant community. Bringing a documentary sensibility to their first fiction film, Covi and Frimmel craft a moving ode to family spirit out of classic neorealist elements. (100 mins.)

First Feature Film.

This year’s Austrian submission for the Best Foreign Language Film Oscar.

THE ROBBER

DIRECTOR: Benjamin Heisenberg - AUSTRIA

“Adapted from a novel that was in turn based on the real-life case of a champion marathoner who led a double life holding up banks in 1980s Austria, Benjamin Heisenberg’s sleek and intelligent genre exercise is at once an action thriller, a love story, a character study, and an existential parable. Its protagonist, Johann (Andreas Lust, Revanche), is defined almost exclusively by his twin obsessions. He runs and he robs, therefore he is. Alternating between endorphin-rush kineticism and stretches of quiet tension, The Robber is as precise and single-minded as its hero. At the film’s center is a brilliantly calibrated...

“Adapted from a novel that was in turn based on the real-life case of a champion marathoner who led a double life holding up banks in 1980s Austria, Benjamin Heisenberg’s sleek and intelligent genre exercise is at once an action thriller, a love story, a character study, and an existential parable. Its protagonist, Johann (Andreas Lust, Revanche), is defined almost exclusively by his twin obsessions. He runs and he robs, therefore he is. Alternating between endorphin-rush kineticism and stretches of quiet tension, The Robber is as precise and single-minded as its hero. At the film’s center is a brilliantly calibrated performance by Lust, by turns explosively physical and tightly coiled, as a man driven to attain a state of perpetual motion.”—New York Film Festival. (96 mins.)